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The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies, Volume 3: Love, Lifestyles and a Multiplicity of Capitals (Routledge Advances in Sociology)
by Will AtkinsonThis book continues the Class Structure of Capitalist Societies series by exploring the place of class among a confluence of factors in shaping people’s lives, loves and lifestyles across three nations.Previous volumes in the series examined the shape, history and cultural expressions of class structures. Now, grappling with themes usually put under the labels of ‘intersectionality’ and ‘work-life balance’ and bridging literatures seldom brought together, this volume uses an innovative mix of statistical techniques to untangle the messy nexus of factors – class, age, gender, race/ethnicity, intimate relations, political context and more – underpinning everyday routines, spaces, possessions, practices, (im)possibilities and self-perceptions in the US, Germany and Sweden. In the process it advances the specific vision of class and social relations developed by Pierre Bourdieu, pursuing the case, above all, that conceptual and methodological progress is necessary to fully recognise and explore the multiplicity of desires, dispositions and demands at play in people’s lives.The volume will be of major interest to scholars of class, culture, gender and family but will appeal to anyone interested in the interplay of identities and pressures implicated in contemporary experiences and inequalities.
Class Struggle and Identity Politics: A Guide
by Marc James LégerContemporary bipartisan politics undermines socialist solidarity by ignoring class issues and pitting advocates of social justice against ethno-national chauvinists. This guide to the recent wave of "woke" culture wars provides a radical class analysis and critique of the most popular academic trends around diversity and inclusion: radical democracy, intersectionality, privilege theory, critical race theory, intersectionality and decoloniality. The book further explains the complexity of today’s cultural conflicts by examining how these issues are viewed across the political spectrum, including populist and postmodern perspectives. Exploring historical, cultural, political and economic developments since the postwar era, this follow-up to Identity Trumps Socialism provides the reader with everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask about the campus wars that have gone mainstream.
Class Struggle and Identity Politics: A Guide
by Marc James LégerContemporary bipartisan politics undermines socialist solidarity by ignoring class issues and pitting advocates of social justice against ethno-national chauvinists. This guide to the recent wave of "woke" culture wars provides a radical class analysis and critique of the most popular academic trends around diversity and inclusion: radical democracy, intersectionality, privilege theory, critical race theory, intersectionality and decoloniality. The book further explains the complexity of today’s cultural conflicts by examining how these issues are viewed across the political spectrum, including populist and postmodern perspectives. Exploring historical, cultural, political and economic developments since the postwar era, this follow-up to Identity Trumps Socialism provides the reader with everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask about the campus wars that have gone mainstream.
Class, Trauma, Identity: Psychosocial Encounters (Routledge Advances in Sociology)
by Giorgos BithymitrisThis book is a dialectic and multi-perspective examination of classed traumas in late modernity. The primary anchoring question is whether and how class becomes a condition of possibility for coping with traumas. What does it mean to experience deindustrialization, crises, or domestic violence from a specific class position? Do the coping mechanisms differ along the lines of class, gender, race, age, or ethnicity? The text negotiates such questions, travelling back and forth from psychoanalysis to sociology and from the global to the local, while critically engaging with memories, narratives, and myths engraved into social and personal histories. Through a dialogic quest for what is silenced, and what is salient within oral, written, and visual testimonies, it foregrounds what the upper classes prefer to neglect: the traumatizing core of the new class divide. Rather than idealizing or vilifying the dominated, this study calls for an exploration of practices, narrations, and spaces whereby alienation and integration co-exist antagonistically, producing hybrid and fragmented, but also potentially transformative, subjectivities. This book will be of interest to scholars of humanities and social sciences, primarily for those studying social stratification and inequalities, sociology of emotions, identity theory, trauma and memory, political psychoanalysis, labour history, and ethnography.
Class, Trauma, Identity: Psychosocial Encounters (Routledge Advances in Sociology)
by Giorgos BithymitrisThis book is a dialectic and multi-perspective examination of classed traumas in late modernity. The primary anchoring question is whether and how class becomes a condition of possibility for coping with traumas. What does it mean to experience deindustrialization, crises, or domestic violence from a specific class position? Do the coping mechanisms differ along the lines of class, gender, race, age, or ethnicity? The text negotiates such questions, travelling back and forth from psychoanalysis to sociology and from the global to the local, while critically engaging with memories, narratives, and myths engraved into social and personal histories. Through a dialogic quest for what is silenced, and what is salient within oral, written, and visual testimonies, it foregrounds what the upper classes prefer to neglect: the traumatizing core of the new class divide. Rather than idealizing or vilifying the dominated, this study calls for an exploration of practices, narrations, and spaces whereby alienation and integration co-exist antagonistically, producing hybrid and fragmented, but also potentially transformative, subjectivities. This book will be of interest to scholars of humanities and social sciences, primarily for those studying social stratification and inequalities, sociology of emotions, identity theory, trauma and memory, political psychoanalysis, labour history, and ethnography.
Class Warfare: Class, Race, and College Admissions in Top-Tier Secondary Schools
by Lois Weis Kristin Cipollone Heather JenkinsStories abound about the lengths to which middle- and upper-middle-class parents will go to ensure a spot for their child at a prestigious university. From the Suzuki method to calculus-based physics, from AP tests all the way back to early-learning Kumon courses, students are increasingly pushed to excel with that Harvard or Yale acceptance letter held tantalizingly in front of them. And nowhere is this drive more apparent than in our elite secondary schools. In Class Warfare, Lois Weis, Kristin Cipollone, and Heather Jenkins go inside the ivy-yearning halls of three such schools to offer a day-to-day, week-by-week look at this remarkable drive toward college admissions and one of its most salient purposes: to determine class. Drawing on deep and sustained contact with students, parents, teachers, and administrators at three iconic secondary schools in the United States, the authors unveil a formidable process of class positioning at the heart of the college admissions process. They detail the ways students and parents exploit every opportunity and employ every bit of cultural, social, and economic capital they can in order to gain admission into a “Most Competitive” or “Highly Competitive Plus” university. Moreover, they show how admissions into these schools—with their attendant rankings—are used to lock in or improve class standing for the next generation. It’s a story of class warfare within a given class, the substrata of which—whether economically, racially, or socially determined—are fiercely negotiated through the college admissions process. In a historic moment marked by deep economic uncertainty, anxieties over socioeconomic standing are at their highest. Class, as this book shows, must be won, and the collateral damage of this aggressive pursuit may just be education itself, flattened into a mere victory banner.
Class Warfare: Class, Race, and College Admissions in Top-Tier Secondary Schools
by Lois Weis Kristin Cipollone Heather JenkinsStories abound about the lengths to which middle- and upper-middle-class parents will go to ensure a spot for their child at a prestigious university. From the Suzuki method to calculus-based physics, from AP tests all the way back to early-learning Kumon courses, students are increasingly pushed to excel with that Harvard or Yale acceptance letter held tantalizingly in front of them. And nowhere is this drive more apparent than in our elite secondary schools. In Class Warfare, Lois Weis, Kristin Cipollone, and Heather Jenkins go inside the ivy-yearning halls of three such schools to offer a day-to-day, week-by-week look at this remarkable drive toward college admissions and one of its most salient purposes: to determine class. Drawing on deep and sustained contact with students, parents, teachers, and administrators at three iconic secondary schools in the United States, the authors unveil a formidable process of class positioning at the heart of the college admissions process. They detail the ways students and parents exploit every opportunity and employ every bit of cultural, social, and economic capital they can in order to gain admission into a “Most Competitive” or “Highly Competitive Plus” university. Moreover, they show how admissions into these schools—with their attendant rankings—are used to lock in or improve class standing for the next generation. It’s a story of class warfare within a given class, the substrata of which—whether economically, racially, or socially determined—are fiercely negotiated through the college admissions process. In a historic moment marked by deep economic uncertainty, anxieties over socioeconomic standing are at their highest. Class, as this book shows, must be won, and the collateral damage of this aggressive pursuit may just be education itself, flattened into a mere victory banner.
Class Warfare: Class, Race, and College Admissions in Top-Tier Secondary Schools
by Lois Weis Kristin Cipollone Heather JenkinsStories abound about the lengths to which middle- and upper-middle-class parents will go to ensure a spot for their child at a prestigious university. From the Suzuki method to calculus-based physics, from AP tests all the way back to early-learning Kumon courses, students are increasingly pushed to excel with that Harvard or Yale acceptance letter held tantalizingly in front of them. And nowhere is this drive more apparent than in our elite secondary schools. In Class Warfare, Lois Weis, Kristin Cipollone, and Heather Jenkins go inside the ivy-yearning halls of three such schools to offer a day-to-day, week-by-week look at this remarkable drive toward college admissions and one of its most salient purposes: to determine class. Drawing on deep and sustained contact with students, parents, teachers, and administrators at three iconic secondary schools in the United States, the authors unveil a formidable process of class positioning at the heart of the college admissions process. They detail the ways students and parents exploit every opportunity and employ every bit of cultural, social, and economic capital they can in order to gain admission into a “Most Competitive” or “Highly Competitive Plus” university. Moreover, they show how admissions into these schools—with their attendant rankings—are used to lock in or improve class standing for the next generation. It’s a story of class warfare within a given class, the substrata of which—whether economically, racially, or socially determined—are fiercely negotiated through the college admissions process. In a historic moment marked by deep economic uncertainty, anxieties over socioeconomic standing are at their highest. Class, as this book shows, must be won, and the collateral damage of this aggressive pursuit may just be education itself, flattened into a mere victory banner.
Class Warfare: Class, Race, and College Admissions in Top-Tier Secondary Schools
by Lois Weis Kristin Cipollone Heather JenkinsStories abound about the lengths to which middle- and upper-middle-class parents will go to ensure a spot for their child at a prestigious university. From the Suzuki method to calculus-based physics, from AP tests all the way back to early-learning Kumon courses, students are increasingly pushed to excel with that Harvard or Yale acceptance letter held tantalizingly in front of them. And nowhere is this drive more apparent than in our elite secondary schools. In Class Warfare, Lois Weis, Kristin Cipollone, and Heather Jenkins go inside the ivy-yearning halls of three such schools to offer a day-to-day, week-by-week look at this remarkable drive toward college admissions and one of its most salient purposes: to determine class. Drawing on deep and sustained contact with students, parents, teachers, and administrators at three iconic secondary schools in the United States, the authors unveil a formidable process of class positioning at the heart of the college admissions process. They detail the ways students and parents exploit every opportunity and employ every bit of cultural, social, and economic capital they can in order to gain admission into a “Most Competitive” or “Highly Competitive Plus” university. Moreover, they show how admissions into these schools—with their attendant rankings—are used to lock in or improve class standing for the next generation. It’s a story of class warfare within a given class, the substrata of which—whether economically, racially, or socially determined—are fiercely negotiated through the college admissions process. In a historic moment marked by deep economic uncertainty, anxieties over socioeconomic standing are at their highest. Class, as this book shows, must be won, and the collateral damage of this aggressive pursuit may just be education itself, flattened into a mere victory banner.
Class Warfare: Class, Race, and College Admissions in Top-Tier Secondary Schools
by Lois Weis Kristin Cipollone Heather JenkinsStories abound about the lengths to which middle- and upper-middle-class parents will go to ensure a spot for their child at a prestigious university. From the Suzuki method to calculus-based physics, from AP tests all the way back to early-learning Kumon courses, students are increasingly pushed to excel with that Harvard or Yale acceptance letter held tantalizingly in front of them. And nowhere is this drive more apparent than in our elite secondary schools. In Class Warfare, Lois Weis, Kristin Cipollone, and Heather Jenkins go inside the ivy-yearning halls of three such schools to offer a day-to-day, week-by-week look at this remarkable drive toward college admissions and one of its most salient purposes: to determine class. Drawing on deep and sustained contact with students, parents, teachers, and administrators at three iconic secondary schools in the United States, the authors unveil a formidable process of class positioning at the heart of the college admissions process. They detail the ways students and parents exploit every opportunity and employ every bit of cultural, social, and economic capital they can in order to gain admission into a “Most Competitive” or “Highly Competitive Plus” university. Moreover, they show how admissions into these schools—with their attendant rankings—are used to lock in or improve class standing for the next generation. It’s a story of class warfare within a given class, the substrata of which—whether economically, racially, or socially determined—are fiercely negotiated through the college admissions process. In a historic moment marked by deep economic uncertainty, anxieties over socioeconomic standing are at their highest. Class, as this book shows, must be won, and the collateral damage of this aggressive pursuit may just be education itself, flattened into a mere victory banner.
Class Warfare: Class, Race, and College Admissions in Top-Tier Secondary Schools
by Lois Weis Kristin Cipollone Heather JenkinsStories abound about the lengths to which middle- and upper-middle-class parents will go to ensure a spot for their child at a prestigious university. From the Suzuki method to calculus-based physics, from AP tests all the way back to early-learning Kumon courses, students are increasingly pushed to excel with that Harvard or Yale acceptance letter held tantalizingly in front of them. And nowhere is this drive more apparent than in our elite secondary schools. In Class Warfare, Lois Weis, Kristin Cipollone, and Heather Jenkins go inside the ivy-yearning halls of three such schools to offer a day-to-day, week-by-week look at this remarkable drive toward college admissions and one of its most salient purposes: to determine class. Drawing on deep and sustained contact with students, parents, teachers, and administrators at three iconic secondary schools in the United States, the authors unveil a formidable process of class positioning at the heart of the college admissions process. They detail the ways students and parents exploit every opportunity and employ every bit of cultural, social, and economic capital they can in order to gain admission into a “Most Competitive” or “Highly Competitive Plus” university. Moreover, they show how admissions into these schools—with their attendant rankings—are used to lock in or improve class standing for the next generation. It’s a story of class warfare within a given class, the substrata of which—whether economically, racially, or socially determined—are fiercely negotiated through the college admissions process. In a historic moment marked by deep economic uncertainty, anxieties over socioeconomic standing are at their highest. Class, as this book shows, must be won, and the collateral damage of this aggressive pursuit may just be education itself, flattened into a mere victory banner.
Classes and Elites in Democracy and Democratization: A Collection of Readings (Sociology/Psychology/Reference)
by Eva Etzioni-HalevyThis collection of readings has been complied on the assumption that for an adequate explanation of the success and failure, the strengths and weaknesses, of democracy, it is necessary to resort to both class and elite theories and to strive for the future development of the extant beginnings of a synthesis between them. For this purpose, it presents the most central and intellectually outstanding readings that illustrate the manner in which the two theories have analyzed democracy, as well as democratization, in various parts of the world.
Classes and Elites in Democracy and Democratization: A Collection of Readings (Sociology/Psychology/Reference)
by Eva Etzioni HalevyThis collection of readings has been complied on the assumption that for an adequate explanation of the success and failure, the strengths and weaknesses, of democracy, it is necessary to resort to both class and elite theories and to strive for the future development of the extant beginnings of a synthesis between them. For this purpose, it presents the most central and intellectually outstanding readings that illustrate the manner in which the two theories have analyzed democracy, as well as democratization, in various parts of the world.
Classes, Strata and Power (Routledge Library Editions: Social Theory)
by Wlodzimierz WesolowskiProfessor Wesolowski presents a detailed study of Marx's theory of class structure and compares it with non-Marxist theories of social stratification, in particular the functionalist theory of stratification and the theory of power elite. He is also concerned to develop and extend the Marxist approach to the study of class structure and social stratification in a socialist society. The book begins with a thorough and original reconstruction of Marx's theory of class domination in a capitalist society, and goes on to show that contemporary non-Marxist theories of power elites complement rather than contradict Marx's concept of class domination. The author examines in detail the functionalist theory of stratification, but rejects it, preferring the Marxist approach. Finally, though, he demonstrates the complementary nature of the two approaches to the study of class structure by expounding a comprehensive paradigm for empirical research based on Marxist theory but including some elements of contemporary stratification theories as well.
Classes, Strata and Power (Routledge Library Editions: Social Theory)
by Wlodzimierz WesolowskiProfessor Wesolowski presents a detailed study of Marx's theory of class structure and compares it with non-Marxist theories of social stratification, in particular the functionalist theory of stratification and the theory of power elite. He is also concerned to develop and extend the Marxist approach to the study of class structure and social stratification in a socialist society. The book begins with a thorough and original reconstruction of Marx's theory of class domination in a capitalist society, and goes on to show that contemporary non-Marxist theories of power elites complement rather than contradict Marx's concept of class domination. The author examines in detail the functionalist theory of stratification, but rejects it, preferring the Marxist approach. Finally, though, he demonstrates the complementary nature of the two approaches to the study of class structure by expounding a comprehensive paradigm for empirical research based on Marxist theory but including some elements of contemporary stratification theories as well.
Classic and Contemporary Readings in Sociology
by Ian Marsh Rosie Campbell Mike KeatingClassic and Contemporary Readings in Sociology introduces the reader to sociological issues, theories and debates, providing extracts of primary source material, from both classical and contemporary theorists. Theorists are examined within their historical and sociological framework and the text provides an analysis of developments in sociological thought and research. The text is divided into four main sections: Part One, Origins and Concepts, surveys the history of the discipline of sociology and examines key themes which have influenced sociological theorising and investigation, in particular, social control, culture and socialisation. Parts Two and Four, Sociological Theories and Sociological Research, include a number of readings from the founding theorists and investigators, including Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber and Charles Booth, and also include more recent theoretical writing and research approaches. The focus on theory and research is extended by a selection of readings centred around the theme of Differences and Inequalities (Part Three); these readings provide students with examples of work from an area where sociological theorising and research has been widely applied.
Classic and Contemporary Readings in Sociology
by Ian Marsh Rosie Campbell Mike KeatingClassic and Contemporary Readings in Sociology introduces the reader to sociological issues, theories and debates, providing extracts of primary source material, from both classical and contemporary theorists. Theorists are examined within their historical and sociological framework and the text provides an analysis of developments in sociological thought and research. The text is divided into four main sections: Part One, Origins and Concepts, surveys the history of the discipline of sociology and examines key themes which have influenced sociological theorising and investigation, in particular, social control, culture and socialisation. Parts Two and Four, Sociological Theories and Sociological Research, include a number of readings from the founding theorists and investigators, including Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber and Charles Booth, and also include more recent theoretical writing and research approaches. The focus on theory and research is extended by a selection of readings centred around the theme of Differences and Inequalities (Part Three); these readings provide students with examples of work from an area where sociological theorising and research has been widely applied.
Classic Anthropology: Critical Essays, 1944-96
by John W. BennettClassic anthropology is Bennett''s label for the work produced by anthropologists between 1915 and 1955. In this book, Bennett criticises classic anthropology for ne glecting the contemporary world and modern societies. '
Classic Anthropology: Critical Essays, 1944-96
by John W. BennettClassic anthropology is Bennett''s label for the work produced by anthropologists between 1915 and 1955. In this book, Bennett criticises classic anthropology for ne glecting the contemporary world and modern societies. '
The Classic Serial on Television and Radio
by Robert Giddings Keith SelbyThe classic serial, invented by BBC Radio Drama sixty years ago, survived and adapted itself to television, the arrival of colour and the global market in what has become a flood of classics with all channels competing for ratings and overseas sales. This richly detailed book traces these developments and analyses the genre's response to social, economic, technical and cultural changes, which have re-shaped it into the form we recognise today. The book contains considerable interview material with performers and media professionals.
The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century (Pelican Ser.)
by Robert RobertsA study which combines personal reminiscences with careful historical research, the myth of the 'good old days' is summarily dispensed with; Robert Roberts describes the period of his childhood, when the main affect of poverty in Edwardian Salford was degredation, and, despite great resources of human courage, few could escape such a prison.
Classic Writings in Law and Society: Contemporary Comments and Criticisms
by A. Javier TrevinoThis volume consists of outstanding essays by contemporary scholars and specialists on classic writings in law and society. This second edition expands the previous volume by adding additional statements. Included are commentaries on Edward A. Ross's Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order, Karl N. Llewellyn's Jurisprudence: Realism in Theory and Practice, Jerome Frank's Law and the Modern Mind, Leon Petrazycki's Law and Morality, and Karl Renner's The Institutions of Private Law and their Social Functions.The goal of Classic Writings in Law and Society is to acquaint a new generation of students with classic writings by diverse social and legal scholars ranging from Henry Sumner Maine, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Hans Kelsen to Eugen Ehrlich, Nicholas S. Timasheff, and Richard Quinney. This work continues to demonstrate their contemporary theoretical relevance. Accordingly, each chapter speaks of the scholars' work in general, how the particular book under consideration fits into that corpus, and how the book is assessed in a present day context. These essays have a clear relation to the "classic" tradition in sociolegal thought.Reading the classics is useful in gaining a better understanding and appreciation of the essential foundation for a post-classic approach in law and social inquiry an approach that can be found in such orientations as critical legal studies, chaos theory in law, and legal semiotics. Classic Writings in Law and Society includes commentaries that consider early writings that set the standard for the social scientific approach in examining issues of law and punishment, social control, joint stock companies, business firms and nation-states in the study of law and society.
Classic Writings in Law and Society: Contemporary Comments and Criticisms
by A. Javier TreviñoThis volume consists of outstanding essays by contemporary scholars and specialists on classic writings in law and society. This second edition expands the previous volume by adding additional statements. Included are commentaries on Edward A. Ross's Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order, Karl N. Llewellyn's Jurisprudence: Realism in Theory and Practice, Jerome Frank's Law and the Modern Mind, Leon Petrazycki's Law and Morality, and Karl Renner's The Institutions of Private Law and their Social Functions.The goal of Classic Writings in Law and Society is to acquaint a new generation of students with classic writings by diverse social and legal scholars ranging from Henry Sumner Maine, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Hans Kelsen to Eugen Ehrlich, Nicholas S. Timasheff, and Richard Quinney. This work continues to demonstrate their contemporary theoretical relevance. Accordingly, each chapter speaks of the scholars' work in general, how the particular book under consideration fits into that corpus, and how the book is assessed in a present day context. These essays have a clear relation to the "classic" tradition in sociolegal thought.Reading the classics is useful in gaining a better understanding and appreciation of the essential foundation for a post-classic approach in law and social inquiry an approach that can be found in such orientations as critical legal studies, chaos theory in law, and legal semiotics. Classic Writings in Law and Society includes commentaries that consider early writings that set the standard for the social scientific approach in examining issues of law and punishment, social control, joint stock companies, business firms and nation-states in the study of law and society.
Classic Writings in Law and Society: Contemporary Comments and Criticisms
by A. Javier TrevinoOver against such reference volumes as encyclopedias, which are intended to provide an overview and summary of a subject, and dictionaries, which define a series of terms, "commentaries" generally consist of a collection of lectures or essays that discuss and explain in some detail particular topics and sources. In law, the best known and oldest of these is William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769). Others, which are equally prominent, include James Kent's Commentaries on American Law (1826) and Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833). This volume is presented in the spirit of the aforementioned treatises. It consists of several essays of contemporary comments and criticisms intended generally to inform and educate.The commentaries in this book have two collective purposes. First and foremost, they are intended to acquaint a new generation of students with thirteen classic books written by diverse sociolegal scholars--ranging from Henry Sumner Maine, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Hans Kelsen to Eugen Ehrlich, Nicholas S. Timasheff, and Richard Quinney. Second, they endeavor to demonstrate the contemporary theoretical relevance, the continuing legacy, of these classic writings. Accordingly, the commentaries discuss each of the scholars' work in general, how the particular book under consideration fits into that corpus, and how the book is assessed in a contemporary context. Singly and collectively these books have a clear relation to the "classic" tradition in thought--a tradition that, although not always acknowledged, is of great significance to current theorizing in law and society.The classic tradition represents those books that have come to be considered the foundational texts in the social scientific study of law. The commentaries collected here were written by some of today's leading scholars of law and society, including Piers Beirne, Dario Melossi, Kalus A. Zigert, Alan Hunt, Marshall B. Clinard, and Dragan Milovanovic.
Classic Writings in Law and Society: Contemporary Comments and Criticisms
by A. Javier TrevinoOver against such reference volumes as encyclopedias, which are intended to provide an overview and summary of a subject, and dictionaries, which define a series of terms, "commentaries" generally consist of a collection of lectures or essays that discuss and explain in some detail particular topics and sources. In law, the best known and oldest of these is William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769). Others, which are equally prominent, include James Kent's Commentaries on American Law (1826) and Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833). This volume is presented in the spirit of the aforementioned treatises. It consists of several essays of contemporary comments and criticisms intended generally to inform and educate.The commentaries in this book have two collective purposes. First and foremost, they are intended to acquaint a new generation of students with thirteen classic books written by diverse sociolegal scholars--ranging from Henry Sumner Maine, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Hans Kelsen to Eugen Ehrlich, Nicholas S. Timasheff, and Richard Quinney. Second, they endeavor to demonstrate the contemporary theoretical relevance, the continuing legacy, of these classic writings. Accordingly, the commentaries discuss each of the scholars' work in general, how the particular book under consideration fits into that corpus, and how the book is assessed in a contemporary context. Singly and collectively these books have a clear relation to the "classic" tradition in thought--a tradition that, although not always acknowledged, is of great significance to current theorizing in law and society.The classic tradition represents those books that have come to be considered the foundational texts in the social scientific study of law. The commentaries collected here were written by some of today's leading scholars of law and society, including Piers Beirne, Dario Melossi, Kalus A. Zigert, Alan Hunt, Marshall B. Clinard, and Dragan Milovanovic.